Developing Good Team-working Skills

Introduction

Many of the resources on NRICH are built around, or at the very least offer opportunities for, group work. In particular, all the problems published on the NRICH website in May 2010 have "Complex Instruction and Group-worthy tasks" as their theme.

One way to improve learners' team-working skills is to work in ways that encourage collaboration and sharing mathematical journeys in smaller and larger groups on a regular basis. To develop such an approach it makes sense to use the experiences of others and build on practices that have worked in other situations. Of course there is no perfect answer but using methodologies that have been researched and have some rigour behind them can save a lot of time and reduce the risk. Such research on group working is discussed by Elizabeth Cohen in her book "Designing Groupwork" and utilised by colleagues currently working with Jo Boaler in the UK on Complex Instruction. There are many of what Jo Boaler might describe as 'group-worthy tasks' on the NRICH site. In fact it is hard to find a list of problems that you would not describe as group-worthy if used in a particular way in the classroom.

Here we have gathered together a collection of short articles that outline the merits of collaborative work, together with examples of teachers' classroom practice.

Many schools who utilise the benefits of group work start by spending a significant amount of curriculum time using activities that offer opportunities to develop team-working skills, knowing that this will pay dividends in the long term. Such tasks are sometimes called skill-building tasks. The skills are group-working skills rather than mathematical skills. This article and the linked resources take this idea and offer some skill-building tasks built around mathematical knowledge. The aim is to make the time spent on them feel less like risk taking because learners will be doing mathematics as they build skills of collaboration. In her book, Elizabeth Cohen lists a set of skills related to working collaboratively which the following is based upon:

• Listening
• Asking questions - making sense of your own understanding
• Explaining by telling how and why
• Helping others - by responding to their needs
• Helping others - to do things for themselves
• Sharing knowledge and reasoning
• Finding out what others think - asking for, listening to and making sense of their ideas
• Reflecting on and making use of what has been said
• Being concise - communicating thinking
• Giving reasons for ideas - communicating reasoning
• Allowing everyone to contribute
• Pulling ideas together - sharing, listening, valuing all contributions
• Finding out if the group is ready to make a decision - consensus making.

Developing skills and norms

These collaborative working skills can be developed through particular group activities. Below we offer six categories of team-building activities that can be used to place learners' focuses on a range of the different skills. Underpinning the tasks are some fundamental principles of developing interdependence and developing group and individual accountability.

Interdependence comes in two forms:

• Goal interdependence - occurs when each group member can only achieve their goal when other group members have achieved theirs - for example "In the Middle" and "All for One" tasks below are designed to develop this principle.
• Resource interdependence - when each group member needs resources or information from other group members to complete their task - for example "Who Needs?" and "Telling How" below.

Group accountability can be associated with all the task types but "Guess the rule" and "What am I?" have a particular focus on this aspect of accountability.

Each category of team-building task has particular rules asssociated with it. These rules are designed to draw out particular team-working skills. It is therefore very important to allow time at the end of each activity for discussing the task and the way teams and indiviudals worked together. If available an observer may be used to focus attention on, and note, particular activities and behaviours.

The Six Categories and Example Problems

1. Who needs?

• respond to needs of others
• help others to do things for themselves.

2. In the middle - Pulling ideas together to produce a single product

• listen and find out what others think
• give reasons for ideas
• pull ideas together
• find out if the group is ready to make a decision.

3. Explaining how - Giving and following instructions to produce individual products

• help others to do things for themselves
• respond to the needs of others - everybody helps everybody
• explain by telling how.

4. Guess the rule - Collaboration and reasoning to come to a shared decision.

• find out what others think
• give reasons for ideas
• be concise
• reflect on what has been said
• allow everyone to contribute.

5. What am I? - Asking and answering questions to draw conclusions

• ask questions - making sense of their own understanding
• be concise
• listen
• reflect on what has been said.

6. All for one - Collaboration towards a single goal

• allow everyone to contribute
• listen
• ask questions and find out what others think
• share knowledge and reasoning
• reflect, and make use of, what has been said
• come to a consensus.

Some final advice

As these skills are developed, learners will also develop team norms, that is the set of rules or guidelines that shape the way they work with each other. Once developed, team norms are used to guide team member behaviour. Team norms are used to assess how well team members are interacting. Team norms enable team members to challenge "non-norm" behaviour. For example, challenging another member of the team who is not listening to the ideas of others.
 

References